


A Thousand, Thousand Years

by boxoftheskyking



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, M/M, Multi, Ronan dies, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 14:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3940495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/pseuds/boxoftheskyking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, you know. None of this was supposed to happen.”</p>
<p>“I know. I like it my way better.”</p>
<p>Gansey lives; Ronan dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand, Thousand Years

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first thing I've written in a very, very long time, and it is ridiculously self-indulgent. I hope you enjoy Grey Havens scenes.
> 
> What is POV? we just don't know.
> 
> If it's interesting, this is a good song to go with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMf6ksn1vjk

“No, no, no, no.” Blue couldn’t stop herself from crying out, pulling at her hair. “This isn’t right, this isn’t how it happens.”

Because it isn’t. Gansey’s on the ground, unconscious but unharmed, and Ronan is tied to a tree with a knife to his throat.

Neeve is holding the knife in her delicate little hand, the other pulling his head up by the chin. Two ghostly figures hold Blue and Adam back, solid to the touch but impossible to see clearly.

“You think you get to walk away? You think the bargain for this boy’s life comes without a consequence?” She sneers down at Gansey, who looks small and forgotten on the ground. Ronan is bleeding and Gansey has no idea.

“Just let him go,” Adam says in his everyone-stay-calm voice. “We can get you whatever you want. Ronan and I - he’s the greywaren, we can get you what you need.”

“What I need is a life,” Neeve says simply. “It’s your choice. This one or that. Lynch or Gansey.”

Adam gapes at her. Blue struggles against the ghost’s amorphous hands.

“I can’t,” Adam says. “That’s not - no. No, I refuse.”

Neeve shrugs. “Gansey it is. He’s halfway gone already.” She motions to her guards.

“No!” Blue cries out. She doesn’t know why she does it, why she still can’t accept that it’s Gansey she’s going to lose. But she says no, and Neeve pauses.

“Me,” Ronan grits out, trying not to move against the blade on his skin. “Take me.”

“ _No.”_ Adam pushes forward, face darkening. “You can’t do that, you don’t get to do that. 

“That’s the choice. This is how things happen, children. Someone takes action. Someone makes a choice.”

She moves the knife lower on his neck, on the base of his throat.

“Let me say goodbye?” he asks, and he sounds so young.

“This isn’t what happens,” Blue whispers. “This isn’t how it goes.”

Neeve doesn’t move, but she raises her eyebrows at him.

“Can you let me go to say goodbye?”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, snake.”

He closes his eyes and slumps for a moment, then opens them full of fire.

“Adam, you have to take care of Matthew. Matthew and Chainsaw, all right?”

“Ronan, you’re not—”

“All right?”

Adam swallows and stands up straight.

“All right. Yes.”

“Blue?”

“Yes,” she can’t look at him.

“Blue.”

She has to look at him.

“You makes sure they keep their end of the deal. Make sure that Gansey—”

“Yes. Yeah, yes. I will.”

Ronan looks back to Adam. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just looks. Adam lets him, and lets himself look back.

“Ronan.” He can’t think of anything else to say.

“Blue,” Ronan says, too softly. “Kiss him for me.”

“But I -”

“Once. Please.”

For a moment she thinks he means Gansey, but his eyes haven’t left Adam’s.

“Okay,” she says, and pulls herself away from the ghost guard. “Adam?”

Adam closes his eyes and lets her pull him in, lets her kiss him gently.

Ronan stays quiet, just watching, even as he feels Neeve’s blade move down between his ribs, hears her disgusted laugh. He tries not to make a noise, not anything that would interrupt. If he is to die, he wants to die kissing Adam.

It fails when the knife goes in, though, the unexpected pain of it, the feeling of leaking, dizziness setting in almost immediately. He cries out and they break apart. Adam is frozen to the spot, and Blue throws herself forward, slammed back to the ground by the guard. She leaps up again, clawing at the air around him, gaining no ground but a split lip and a face full of dust. Ronan tries to tell her to stop, give it up, but he can’t speak.

Neeve wrenches the knife upward and he gasps.

And Noah is there. Noah is at his side, paying no attention to the guards. Neeve startles back at his appearance, but the knife stays firmly in Ronan’s side.

Noah touches the side of his neck, and Ronan is shocked by how warm he feels.

“Hey, Ronan,” Noah smiles at him. “I’ve got you. It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

Ronan breathes out wetly, and says, “Hi.”

Then he slumps, his head lolls forward. Blood drips from his mouth, thick and slow. Noah lets go of him.

“Sacrifice,” Neeve says, and it sounds like an insult.

Noah steps right up to her. For a moment it looks like he’s about to say something, but he just shakes his head and thrusts his hand into her chest. Neeve jerks for a moment, then falls to the ground, dead. The ghosts vanish and so does Noah. The bonds around Ronan vanish, too, and it seems almost odd that they weren’t real. That they were dream-things.

Adam lurches forward to catch him, but doesn’t get there in time. He’s in a pile, almost, just a pile of bleeding limbs propped up against the tree trunk. Adam turns him over, anyway, spread him out and presses his hands to the hole in his side.

“Hey. Hey, hey, hey,” he keeps saying, words with no meaning in them. 

Blue knows he’s already dead. She doesn’t approach, because there’s nothing to be done. Her rational mind tells her,  _Ronan is dead. Stay where you are until you can be useful again_. The rest of her mind has taken a vacation, gone somewhere far away. Her hands are not her hands, and they are clenching and unclenching against her legs as she kneels in the grass. She feels very cold.

Adam is shaking Ronan’s body now, violently, muttering, “You bastard, you bastard, you bastard.” He’s a broken record suddenly. He leans forward and kisses Ronan’s bloody mouth, but it’s still and unresponsive and everything a kiss shouldn’t be. Adam lets him go, lets him fall to the ground and screams.

Blue startles.

Gansey wakes up.

\--

When she looks back on it - which she does, often, late a night in the weeks that follow - everything after Ronan’s death happens out of order. Or maybe it happens in order, but she was so in shock that things didn’t connect.

One moment, Gansey is unconscious. The next, he has Ronan’s body cradled in his arms, blood up to his elbows, begging, “Just tell me what happened, what  _happened_?”

There’s a lot of repetition in her memories. Maybe some of it was real.

One moment she’s kissing Adam, pretending to be someone else, and the next Adam is pushing off into the trees, screaming in Latin at the top of his lungs, fury granting him fluency as he curses Cabeswater. And then Cabeswater is gone, Adam having pulled it down around them, ripped it out of reality with the force of his rage. She can’t understand a thing he says, but she’s not sure if it’s because of the Latin or because of how hard Adam’s crying.

One moment they are sitting in the living room of 300 Fox Way, silent, staring at a full bottle of whiskey until Gansey finally takes a swig, the next Adam is digging his fingers into the mud of an empty field, pulling away from the Gansey’s hand on his shoulder

One moment she’s watching Noah kill her aunt, the next she’s in her mother’s arms, retching onto the ground, seeing Calla touch the side of Ronan’s neck and whisper, “Oh, little snake.”

One moment Adam is banishing Cabeswater, the next he’s rising to his feet, eyes glassy, saying, “We need a plan. We need to do something with . . . all of this.” 

One moment she’s holding Ronan’s arm, watching Gansey fall, unconscious, the next she’s staring at a newspaper article about the bizarre murder just outside of town, the woman with bloody hands dead of a heart attack at the scene of the crime.

Things don’t start happening chronologically until the funeral. Declan looks like a skull, like a dead thing, and Gansey grips his shoulder as they walk past him. He’s polite, nodding to Ronan’s distant relations and friends from school, but his eyes are blurry and unfocused. He is the least Gansey-like she’s ever seen him, and instead of being satisfying, it’s frightening.

 Matthew isn’t there. It’s horrible, everything about the church and the ceremony and the shoes she’s wearing that don’t fit. Adam leaves in the middle of the service, gasping for air. Gansey holds her hand the whole time, so tight it hurts.

Blue still feels cold.

They give it three nights after the burial before sneaking out to dig him up. Matthew’s asleep in the backseat, barely breathing, with a sleeping Chainsaw on his lap. It should be horrible, grotesque, wrapping his body in his own sheets, folding him into the trunk of the Pig. It isn’t, though, not really. It’s very Ronan.

The don’t talk; they don’t need to. They take him to Cabeswater.

It’s raining, of course, outside the circle of trees. Once they cross the border it’s sunny and springtime, odd dreamflowers growing out of the riverbank. Adam has Matthew over his shoulder and Chainsaw tucked into his jacket while Gansey and Blue carry Ronan’s body together. The first step into Cabeswater wakes Matthew up; he grins at them all, a little vacant, and runs to find his mother. The raven shakes herself and takes off after him.

Thankfully, they remembered a shovel. They bury him at the foot of the dreaming tree. No one sets foot inside it, this time.

“None of it was true,” Blue says to herself, touching the bark.

Adam shrugs. “There’s different kinds of true, I think. I think the feeling —”

He swallows and shakes his head. Gansey finishes the burial and kneels beside the grave, damp sleeves rolled up, mud splattered to his elbows. He has hardly said a word since talking to the police the day it happened. He leans down and presses his forehead into the dirt.

Blue and Adam turn away.

Adam feels like he might crawl of his skin, like he can’t hear his own grief over the looming presence of Gansey’s. That’s not fair. It’s not Gansey’s fault; Gansey still doesn’t believe it. Gansey is a hero, and Gansey was a sacrifice. No one’s ever failed quite as spectacularly as Gansey. No one holds it against him but himself.

Adam sinks down at the edge of the water, far enough away from the others that he can feel himself thinking. He runs his fingers through the water, absently, and forces himself to think  _Ronan_. There’s no pain for the first moment; it’s just a word. He pokes at it, in his mind, like a bruise. He has experiences with bruises, and there’s little danger in a bruise out of context. The pain comes, as far as he’s concerned, when you remember the punch, the fall, the action that caused it. He pokes at it, in his mind.  _Ronan._

_Ronan_.

It comes at him like a rush, like every time he used to press down on a black eye and remember the blow.

They’re sitting in the sanctuary at St Agnes at one in the morning, Ronan smelling a little bit of beer, his joints a little looser than normal. Adam’s dozing, can hardly keep his eyes open. Ronan’s telling a story, or maybe a joke, but Adam can’t follow it. He snaps awake when he hears Ronan laugh at him. He blushes, embarrassed to be caught out, and weirdly scared that Ronan will send him away, send him to bed like a little kid. That Ronan will leave him for his own good.

“Come on, man, you’re dead on your feet.”

“No, I’m—” but a yawn breaks in and proves him a liar.

Ronan scoots away from him and pulls him down on the pew. Adam goes, a little uncomfortable, and set his head on Ronan’s thigh. There’s a long silence where they both try to regulate their breathing, not quite matching, not quite counterpoint. Ronan starts humming, quietly enough that Adam can’t tell when it started, and gently brushes his hair back from his forehead. Adam lets out a sigh, a little embarrassed, but finds himself falling asleep.

When he comes back to himself, he’s braced on his hands at the edge of the water, gasping into his own reflection. He knows he’s crying like he can see himself from far away, but he hardly feels it.

Then, over his shoulder in his reflection, Ronan.

He stops breathing for a long moment and closes his eyes.  _Cabeswater_ , he thinks.  _Cabeswater knows what you’re thinking. Cabeswater listens._

_“_ Ronan!” It’s Blue, behind him, and that’s what makes him turn.

Ronan is there, just as he was a week ago, black tank top ripped in the side where the knife went in. He’s close to Adam, close enough to touch, and when Adam turns on his knees he’s eye level with Ronan’s stomach.

“Hey,” Ronan says, and Adam launches himself forward.

He’s cold, but he’s solid, and Adam buries his face in his shirt, arms latching on to the back of his legs.

“You’re cold,” he manages, trying to sound casual. “You’re like Noah.”

“Yep,” Noah says from a few feet away. Adam looks up and sees Noah with his arms around Blue. Blue is watching them cautiously.

“Get up, Parrish,” Ronan says after a moment. 

Adam scrambles to his feet but doesn’t move away from him. He rests his hands unthinkingly on Ronan’s waist, just staring at him.

“Hey,” Ronan says again.

Adam kisses him. He’s cold, and it’s almost like brain freeze, but it’s worth it when he parts his lips and lets Adam in. There’s a fierce joy starting in Adam’s gut which almost blocks out the fury that  _we could have had this, we could have had this the whole time_.

When they break apart Adam tucks his face into Ronan’s shoulder and breathes him in. He doesn’t smell right, but his arms are firm and solid around Adam’s back and it almost feels like he’s breathing. 

He pulls away and Gansey takes his place, shoving in little faster than would be polite. Ronan laughs and holds him tight, grinning at Adam over his shoulder. Gansey pulls back to stare at Ronan’s face, his own muddy and tear-streaked.

“Dude, you’re a fucking mess.” Ronan brushes dirt off Gansey’s forehead with a  _tsk_. 

“I’m so glad you’re back,” Gansey says in a rush. “God, I’m so glad. Jesus,  _Ronan_. Jesus Christ. You were—Don’t ever do that again.”

Ronan pats his cheek and smiles, but there’s something closed about it. He steps back once he’s sure Gansey won’t fall over and holds out a fist to Blue. Blue bumps it and smiles slightly, but doesn’t come closer.

“You’re not staying, are you?” she asks in a small voice.

“What?” Adam turns to stare at her.

“You get psychic powers while I was away?” Ronan says lightly, but he’s avoiding their eyes.

“You’re not staying,” Adam says flatly. “I don’t— No, that doesn’t make sense. Because  _Noah_ — I mean, you’re like Noah, so—”

“I’m not staying either.” Noah lets go of Blue, looking a little guilty. “Sorry. We’re gonna— I mean, Ronan and Matthew and, you know, their mom. We’re gonna go together, I think.”

“We’ve been talking about it,” Ronan says calmly.

“What do you— What do you mean  _talking about it_  you’ve been  _dead_!” Adam grabs on to Ronan’s arm. “Did I— I mean, what can I—?”

Ronan’s shrugs and catches his hand. “I’m not up for being a ghost, staying here, flickering in and out. It’s not my style. It’s bullshit, actually. No offense, Noah.”

“None taken.”

“And I don’t want you guys stuck like me, like you have to wait for me or something.”

Gansey finds his voice, finally. “Wait. Back up. We just got you back, and you’re - what - you’re killing yourself?”

“Gansey—”

“No, I’m just trying to understand. We  _just got you back_. Where the hell are you gonna go?”

“Can’t tell,” Noah says softly.

“Don’t really know,” Ronan add. “This isn’t life, and you know it. This is just goodbye. Just came back for goodbye. And to get my bird. Thanks for remembering, by the way.”

“How long?” Adam asks, linking their fingers together. “How long before you go?”

“How long does it take to say goodbye?”

Adam pulls him close, sets his chin on Ronan’s shoulder. “Fifty years.”

Ronan laughs. “Yeah?”

He meets Blue’s eyes and smiles at her, softer than usual. “You get it, don’t you?”

She nods. 

“It wouldn’t be real, no matter how long I stay. It’s not really true.”

She nods again and wipes her nose. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, you know. None of this was supposed to happen.”

“I know. I like it my way better.”

“Jackass.” 

“Yeah, well.”

“Such a fuss over Ronan Lynch.” She says it gently, though, just an edge of mocking to make him smile.

Gansey interrupts. “You can’t go. You can’t just leave, after everything.”

“You can’t control me,” Ronan says, moving to him and holding his shoulders. “Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you want.”

“That’s not—this is different. Come on, Ronan.”

“I’m sorry, Gansey, I really am.”

“Just stay here, stay in Cabeswater with your mother, with Matthew, just until we figure something out. We can. Gwenllian, maybe, or Ar—”

“Gansey,” Ronan says sharply. “You’ve got to learn how to let shit go.”

Gansey takes a step back and holds his stomach like he’s been punched. Ronan looks unbearably sad for a moment, but doesn’t reach out to him. 

“Matthew here?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Blue says. “Gone to find your mom, I think.”

Ronan nods. “Well,” he says to her. “Might as well, you know.”

She hugs Noah first while the others hang back. They could all stand staring at each other for hours, but that won’t change Ronan’s mind. If she doesn’t get her goodbyes in now, she won’t get them at all.

“I’m going to miss you so much,” she whispers into his neck. He scratches her scalp and then squeezes her tight. As she pulls back she gives him a sweet, solid, kiss on the mouth. “I love you, you know?”

Noah smiles at her and taps her bottom lip with one cold finger. “Love you too.”

She turns to Ronan, next, and feels her throat start to close up. Before he can say anything cutting, she leans up and kisses him, too, just softly. He’s staring at her when she pulls away, so she cups his cheek in her hand and says, “I love you. Asshole.”

He rolls his eyes and says, “Come here, maggot,” as he gathers her up in his arms. He picks her clear up off the ground, which would normally make her furious.

“I’ll look after them, I promise,” she whispers to him, sniffling a little.

“Yeah. Make them look after you sometimes too, yeah?” He puts her down and taps her chin. “Two-way mirror.”

She doesn’t know how to respond to that, so she gives a weird half-laugh half-sob and salutes before stepping back.

Adam looks between Gansey and the others, but Gansey is frozen, head ducked and arms wrapped around himself like he’s going to be sick. It’s nothing Adam’s ever seen before.

Adam straightens up and steps to Ronan.

“I love you,” he says, clearly. 

Ronan grins at him.

“I could have - God, I love you.” He has more to say, he must, but he can’t think of it.

“Good,” is all Ronan says. 

“Please.” He just says it once, just to have said it.

Ronan shakes his head. “No one falls in love at seventeen and stays that way. You know that.”

Adam doesn’t say anything, can’t say anything. He leans forward for a kiss, wrapping himself around Ronan like he’s trying to take him over, take him in.

“Get out,” Ronan says in his ear, fiercely, once the kiss is over. “You’ve always wanted to get out, so go.”

“Okay,” Adam says, and his voice is thick. “Fuck. Fuck, Ronan.”

Ronan pushes him back and steps away, rubbing at his eyes just once, fast enough that you could miss it. No one does.

They stare at each other, too much to say, too much to commit to never saying. There’s a rustle above them, and Chainsaw lands on Ronan’s shoulder.

He grins softly at her, and Adam covers his face with both hands, just for a moment.

“Noah,” Adam says when he gathers himself, holding out a hand with false bravado. “I’ll miss you, man.”

Noah wrinkles up his forehead. “That’s all I get? A handshake?”

Blue giggles behind him, and Adam grabs Noah up in a hug. As he pulls back he follows an instinct and presses a quick kiss to Noah’s mouth. Noah smiles  and ducks his head.

“Bye, Adam,” he murmurs, and Adam squeezes his shoulders once before letting him go.

He steps back, and they all turn to Gansey. Gansey is still folded in on himself, not looking up. Blue puts and arm around him and says something in his ear, to quiet to hear.

“There has to be another way,” he grits out. “This can’t be  _it_. There has to be a way.”

Noah takes his arms and unwraps them from around his body. “You did so well. You really did. You’ll be all right.”

“No, no,  _Noah_ , I can’t—”

“It’ll be okay.”

“It—  _None of this_  is okay. Nothing—

Noah pulls him into an embrace, holding tight. “You’ll live. Live a long, long time, and you’ll be happy. And kiss Blue. It’s great; I recommend it.”

Blue laughs, teary and thick behind them.

“I’m never going to forget you,” Gansey says, holding Noah’s face between his hands. “Not ever. I’m alive because  of you, and I’m never ever going to forget that.”

Noah screws up his face. “Don’t think about that part. Just remember that we were friends, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Gansey leans in and kisses him.

“I didn’t know ghosts could blush,” he says, trying hard to sound like his old self.

“Not a ghost for long.” 

Gansey lets him go and forces himself to turn to Ronan. Ronan, who doesn’t look impatient, doesn’t look wary. He looks the closest he ever has to the early days of their friendship, before death and dreaming got in the way.

Chainsaw flaps over to the edge of the clearing, where Matthew stands waiting with Aurora.

“I better be getting a kiss, too,” Ronan teases. “Otherwise I’ll be mad.”

Gansey tries to smile at him. “Thought about it, have you?”

“You know it.”

Ronan reaches for him, and he goes, and he knows that for as long as Ronan’s been following him, he’s been doing the same. It’s an odd sort of kiss, longer than either expected, and fuller. It’s Gansey who pulls away, choking on his own breath, to press his face into Ronan’s neck.

“Don’t. Don’t, don’t, don’t,  _please.”_

Ronan shushes him, holds him, says nothing.

“I’ll do anything, please.  _Please_.”

Adam and Blue are at his sides, then, holding him upright.

Ronan holds him by the shoulders, makes him look him in the eye. “You’re more than Glendower. More than Cabeswater. Don’t you ever fucking forget that. I could live for a thousand years and I’d never dream up anything like you. Not in a thousand, thousand years.”

Ronan kisses his forehead once and pushes him away. Gansey sinks back into the arms around him, shattered.

“Ready?” Aurora asks, and they all startle a bit. She seems to float toward them, the raven on her shoulder and her hand held out toward her son.

Ronan takes it, and grabs Noah with his other hand. He gives them one long last look and turns away, heading into the trees.

Gansey calls out, “Ronan,  _please_ ,” and Blue hushes him. Ronan doesn’t turn around.

Noah does, just for a moment. He smiles over his shoulder, and his cheek is clear - no bruising, no broken bones.

Then, in less than a moment, they’re gone.


End file.
